


Look up and Find Your Planet

by holyfant



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: None of the words he knows are good to say what he means. He could paint it, maybe, if he tried.





	Look up and Find Your Planet

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'ed; feel free to point out spelling or grammar mistakes :-)

“You're still fucked up, Dizz,” Thor says. “You should be in bed.”

 

Thor moves away to accommodate him when Dizzee turns away from the painted walls – he was closer than Dizzee realized. “'s Alright,” he says. “I feel fine.”

 

Thor smiles, but he looks a little worried. He goes towards the mattress in the corner, sinks down on it and feels around the sheets for a cigarette. He looks at Dizzee when it's lit, the smoke curtaining him. His mouth with the cig in it is like something bright in a dark room: Dizzee feels like he has to look at it, like he can't not.

 

“D'you want one?” says Thor, perhaps reading his look wrong.

 

“Nah. Better not.” It's funny that he's nervous now, now that he's here; he wasn't before, talking to Boo.

 

“Are you sure you're okay?”

 

“Uh-uh.”

 

“You've got that look.” The cigarette twitches with Thor's smile. “You wanna sit?”

 

Clumsily, as if his feet are suddenly two sizes larger than usual, Dizzee goes towards him; for a moment he wonders if it's still the bad dust in his veins that makes him feel like something is straining inside him, trying to burst out. He doesn't remember much from the show, but he remembers seeing Thor: how it made him suddenly very aware of his body, its movement, that he was living in it and other people could see it. Maybe that was the dust, but he feels that way again now, dropping down on Thor's mattress, their elbows jostling.

 

“Here.” Thor hands him a can of Coke that he's fished out from somewhere behind him. “Drink that, you look peaky, man.”

 

The can hisses when Dizzee opens it. He drinks; it's warm, prickling sticky and sweet in his throat. “Thanks.”

 

“Does it help?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They smile. They're sitting so close together. On the way here Dizzee thought so many pieces of thoughts, so many things he wanted to say; now there's nothing. He feels stupid with it, with how the words have gone away when he can usually rely on them so well. There's just the colour of it, the feeling of it: warm Coke sticking his lips together, his knee touching Thor's thigh, Thor's eyes watching him as if he's expecting him to do something. What? It's not so clear now. He didn't say to Thor what he thought he said, the night before, that was only a bad trip. Now it's like having said it, he can't say it again, but Thor hasn't heard it yet.

 

“I thought you were gonna die, yesterday,” says Thor. He doesn't smile. “I've seen some bad trips, but that was something else.” He blows smoke away from Dizzee's face. “You were _gone_.”

 

“Maybe.” That was how it felt, too. He was gone. He realizes he wants the cigarette now – not a different one, but the one in Thor's mouth. “But I came back, right?” He reaches out slowly, waiting for Thor to object, and when he doesn't he takes the cig between the v of his fingers, watching it disengage from Thor's lips. Sucking down the smoke he feels courage solidifying in his chest.

 

“Yeah,” Thor says, looking at him, his _fucking eyes_ , they're bright as stars. “I guess you did.”

 

//

 

They don't talk about it; Dizzee just doesn't leave, even when it's long past time to go home. He knows his brothers will be worried about him, will be trying to cover for him with their parents. Still his thoughts of them are remote, like they belong to something he read once, something he saw from afar. Thor's got new sheets up over the walls, and together they fill them up with drawings and tags, trading paint canisters back and forth. Everything smells of paint, and Dizzee doesn't know, after a while, whether outside it's night or day.

 

Thor stands back, hands on hips, looking at what they've done. “You like the sheets?”

 

“It's different on textile.”

 

“Yeah, but at least you can keep the paintings that way.”

 

Dizzee smiles at him. He likes the walls in the city partly because they _don't_ keep: they're painted over, they're knocked down, they're set on fire for insurance money. He wants people to see his work but only by accident, when they're going to their jobs, when they're hustling on a new corner, when they're finding coins for the subway. It's like getting a new city every day, just as full of shit as the old one, never better, always different. But maybe it's not the same for Thor. White blond boy who has friends who wear feathers and kiss each other. Maybe he's used to getting to keep things.

 

“How you paying for this digs anyway?” he asks. It's a dump, but it's Thor's. Dizzee doesn't have that, everything he's got he shares – with his brothers, with his neighbourhood – and what he makes is out there, for everyone to see.

 

“I'm not,” Thor says easily and doesn't elaborate. Probably someone gave it to him, or let him have it for a while – someone who looked at him and said, _I want to give you what you want_ , and who actually could. He knows people that Dizzee can't imagine. He couldn't imagine Thor either until he met him.

 

He goes over to him now, stands with him to look at the paintings. Thor's doing a sort of poem, with words coming out big, red and black. Dizzee's done Rumi, holding a bloodied disco ball with his top hat on it.

 

Then they're not looking at the paintings but at each other. Thor takes Dizzee's bicep in his hand, squeezing it. Dizzee feels a sort of relief: this feeling can't only be his own, not when Thor is looking at him like that. A hand shouldn't feel like that, like it's electrified when it touches him; and this isn't just a trip, this isn't the lights and music of a club, this isn't drink pumping in his veins and someone in his ear telling him honey-voiced _go on, kiss him_.

 

“Hey now,” Thor says softly, like trying to lure out a scared cat.

 

When girls kiss Dizzee, it's like a reward, like they're saying _you did well_ , but when Thor kisses him, it's like a challenge. Like he's saying _you can do well_. Like Dizzee's not there yet.

 

“Shit,” he says when Thor lets him go.

 

Thor smiles wide. He doesn't seem terrified at all. “That bad?”

 

“You taste like paint,” Dizzee says, “what, you been eating it?” and then they're laughing; he hugs Thor around the chest and pulls him in until he can feel his laughter.

 

“Yeah,” Thor says when they've calmed down a little, arms around each other. “I think I've probably been eating it a little.”

 

They laugh again, they kiss again, kiss kiss kiss, Dizzee feels suddenly without warning like he would like to stay here with Thor for the rest of his life. He pulls back.

 

“This is whack.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I –” He shakes his head, because none of the words he knows are good to say what he means. He could paint it, maybe, if he tried. “This is – big,” he says, inadequately.

 

“Big like being an alien and falling to earth?” Thor's eyes are laughing.

 

“Big like being an alien and seeing your planet up in the sky,” says Dizzee seriously. “Knowing it's out there.”

 

They kiss; Thor's mouth still tastes faintly like metal.

 

//

 

How long has he been here? “They're gonna be looking for me,” says Dizzee, looking up at the ceiling. He stretches out on the mattress and hands Thor his joint.

 

“Yeah? Good friends.”

 

Dizzee smiles. “They're my brothers. All of them.”

 

“Do you need to go back?” Thor raises himself on his elbows and looks down on Dizzee.

 

“Tomorrow, probably.”

 

“All right.” Easy as that. Thor tips his head and kisses Dizzee's mouth, smoky, sweet with weed. “I want you to paint Rumi one more time. Paint him like you'd always want him to be.”

 

“The ultimate Rumi?”

 

“Rumi looking up at the sky and seeing his planet.”

 

Dizzee grins. “You got it.”


End file.
